


At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Angst, Disability, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Male Friendship, Season 3 that never was, Vignette, Whump, carrying on with a frequently observed trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23762164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: There was a night coming he would not waken from.
Relationships: Emma Green & Mary Phinney, Emma Green/Henry Hopkins, Jedediah "Jed" Foster & Henry Hopkins, Jedediah "Jed" Foster/Mary Phinney
Comments: 18
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

At first, Henry has simply thought it was fatigue, long days, longer nights, for longer than he could remember. The candles were tallow or a wick floating in a shallow dish of oil, not beeswax tapers or the clear, soft gleam of whale-oil from his childhood; the noon sun in Virginia was so bright it must be squinted at and the grey dust rose in the rutted streets with the passage of every wagon, with every pair of worn boots or threadbare slippers. It was his faith, falling away, it was his anger, pulling him under, it was his longing for a dreamless night, a deathless night. When he could not convince himself any longer, he went to Jed.

“Tell me the truth,” Henry said. He meant, _don’t make me wait, don’t try to soothe me_. He wanted a surgeon, not a nurse. Nothing gentle.

“Your exam shows you’re losing your sight,” Jed answered, unable to be brusque.

“I’m going blind,” Henry said.

“Henry—”

“Say it.” He could still see Jed’s face clearly enough or at least he knew his expressions well enough to read what the shadows meant, the steadiness of Jed’s dark eyes. This was the man Mary had fallen in love with, this kind man who carried sorrow with him not lightly but without questioning it.

“You’re going blind,” Jed said, reaching out to lay his hand on Henry’s arm.

“And there’s nothing to be done,” Henry said.

“No. Well, there’s nothing to be done here. Even if I had the right equipment, you need an oculist, a specialist. What I could do wouldn’t be worth a damn, even if I had Samuel’s help,” Jed replied. “If ever anything proved there is a God in Heaven, it’s a man’s eye, the delicacy of it, the intricacy, the sheer bloody-minded genius of it.”

“I thought as much.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Jed said. “All hope is not lost. I shall write to a colleague in Boston and another in Paris, an old friend in Vienna. I feel certain one of them will be able to do something for you.”

“You’re very kind, Jed, but you needn’t,” Henry said. 

“You must let me. Right away, while they may do the most good,” Jed said. He did not say an expert could save Henry’s vision, only some salvage. How much darkness could he rejoice over? How little light?

“No. I accept it. I accept this is what is meant for me,” Henry said. “And even if I did not, I shouldn’t be able to afford a long journey, expensive treatment, a convalescence. What little I have I must use to make a life I can live without burdening anyone.”

“Henry, please—Mary and I, we could help, we have more than enough,” Jed said. He spoke quickly, confidently, the tone of a man born to wealth. Even if not a penny had come from his inheritance, the plantation’s currency of blood and soul, if it had been his officer’s salary or what Mary’s first husband had left of his honest work, Henry could not have taken it.

“There are better things to spend it on. That will do more good.” Henry laid his hand atop Jed’s, the gesture arresting. He’d learned over the years how sensitive Jed was to touch, had seen how Mary knew it, how often her hand had grazed Jed’s well before they were married.

“You’re a Congregationalist, man, you needn’t be a martyr. Rome isn’t interested in the likes of you,” Jed countered and Henry couldn’t help but laugh. He could still see. It wasn’t pitiable—yet.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Henry said. He would lose his sight; he’d keep his pride. “You must admit, I have a lot to consider before I leave.”

“Before you leave?”

“You can’t imagine I’d stay,” Henry said. “Like this. What I will become.”

“Henry—”

“Jed, you cannot argue with me about this,” Henry said.

“Blast you, of course, I can!”

“No, you cannot. You are not going blind.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Reverend Hopkins, I beg your pardon, but I must tell you: I think you are wrong,” Mary began, sounding so much like the women of his mother’s circle, those direct, upright, moral women who didn’t believe in goodness because they knew it, the way they knew the sun rose and the moon, the way they’d learned to thread needles and knead bread, to work and make it known that they did. What a blessing she was, her voice, her hands, that way she had of looking straight in a man’s eyes and saying what she thought was true.

“After all this time, this endless War, won’t you call me Henry?” he interrupted her. She had as sweet a smile for a friend as she did for her husband. He would miss seeing it, the way he’d miss watching a butterfly alight on a blossom’s petal. 

“Henry, will you let me talk sense to you? For I fear you are about to be as great a fool as any man may, and to hold my tongue—”

“Go ahead. I don’t believe anything could stop you,” Henry said.

“I shouldn’t let anything keep me from helping a friend. A dear friend, one who is letting his pride, his stupid stubbornness decide his future. His happiness,” she said, pouring out the tea, stirring in sugar and milk the way she’d learned he liked, without his ever saying a word. Jed Foster had the devil’s own luck.

“I believe you would break down the pearly gates if you thought it was right,” Henry replied.

“I should!” she beamed, as though he had not just uttered heresy. “Oh, my dear Henry! You must let us help you. You must not give up hope before-time; that is a greater crime against God, to despair, to hold your pride close like a shield, your fearfulness like a great flaming sword.”

“It’s not another War, Mary. It’s only my sight,” he said quietly.

“It’s not! It’s your future-- and not only yours! It’s the work you will not do, the bridges you will not cross. It’s not only your own life, your own dreams, and if I am friend enough to call you Henry, I am friend enough to tell you. It’s Emma’s life, even more, her very soul; I’ve seen you together, how she seeks you and you her, how you are water in the desert to each other—” Mary broke off, her color up, her dark eyes so bright. If she had spoken so to her husband, he must have kissed her or crowed, to have such a wife, such a beauty to call his heart’s companion.

“It is not such a great loss, my vision. I am not such a loss, not to the hospital, not to anyone,” he said, unable to say her name. _Emma_. How often had he woken from a dream with it on his lips? How often had he given up the recitation of Psalms on sleepless nights and found his only succor in a simple litany _beautiful Emma lovely Emma darling dear beloved Emma_?

“Such humility! Do you fool anyone with it? Maybe these Southerners—they haven’t any acuity. Is it heat perhaps? Or gentlemen, who believe in some false chivalry? It won’t have any effect on me, Henry. I’ve been lower than you. I’ve lost my husband, my child, my faith, my health. Though I fought it all. I’d have promised anything,” Mary said, shaming him again in what she revealed to persuade him. He was shamed, but not persuaded.

“I can’t do it, Mary. I can’t hope and be disappointed. I can’t hope and let that hope be an anchor that drowns me. Her,” he said. “I can be afraid of the dark. Of weakness and pity. I can pray through that.”

“You will never have my pity, Henry Hopkins,” Mary said firmly, just this side of fierce. He’d heard her sing to dying boys, heard her murmur theorems like the nuns told their rosary. “My care, my affection, my hand to turn to any task you set, are yours-- but not pity.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“I wasn’t finished,” she said. “If you leave without telling her, I shan’t be able to forgive that.”

“I don’t understand,” Henry said.

“I have been left so. It is abandonment. If you are able to act and you don’t—it’s cruelty. It hurts,” she said. She held his gaze steadily, letting him see what he would, while he might. 

“A sin,” he said.

“No. A sin is for God to forgive. This is something else, something smaller. Harder,” she said.

“I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want her hurt,” Henry said.

“Then you’ve only to talk to her,” Mary said.

“You say that as if it’s easy,” Henry replied. Mary laughed, the softest sound, rueful and merry.

“I know it’s not. But you must do it. Roll up your sleeves, set your mind, your strength agin it, as Matron would say,” Mary answered.

“She would not have let me make so many excuses,” Henry said.

“No, she would not. It’s why you came to me, isn’t it, dear Henry?” Mary said. “You knew what I would say and how and how many lumps of sugar I’d put in your tea.”

“What was needed,” he said.

“What was wanted,” she corrected.


	3. Chapter 3

Henry rubbed his hand against his eyes, as if it were an ordinary Saturday evening, his attempt a sermon strewn around him. As if he hoped for the candle to gutter out and relieve him of the responsibility of writing. It was a sunlit morning and he knew better than to wish for darkness.

“I could come back later if this time doesn’t suit,” Emma said from the open doorway. Her dress was plain, not as fine as the ones she’d worn when she first came to Mansion House. That white dress with its ruffles and frills, she’d looked like a damask rose in that though Jed had teased and called her an assassin. Prescient, the man was, though unaware how it was that Emma had struck him, Foster more familiar then with bullets than love’s arrow. Now she was waiting in a blue gown dark enough to be a nun’s habit. She had taken to wearing her hair in a snood, much as Mary had when she had been Head Nurse, and Henry suddenly imaged the net replaced by one made of pearls strung on golden threads, the headdress of a queen.

“No. I’m remiss, please come in, sit down,” he said, gesturing at the sofa across from him. Emma walked over but stood.

“I don’t feel right sitting if you are going to stand,” she said. She raised her eyebrows and there was the flash of her dimple. “And I shall get a horrid crick in my neck, looking up at you, Henry.”

He sat in the armchair that had taken the place of a bed on nights he was too exhausted to climb the stairs. Emma folded her hands in her lap, polite, wary. He had loved her for years, but not very well.

“I wanted you to know I’m going home,” he said.

“A furlough? Seems long overdue to me,” she said. “A chaplain is in as much need of rest as any other enlisted man.”

“No. I’m leaving the hospital, Mansion House, I’m resigning my commission and going home for good,” he said. He’d spent the night considering how he’d tell her and here he was, fumbling through it, his heart pounding, as clumsy as he’d ever been.

“But, Henry, I don’t understand—”

“I cannot continue as a military chaplain, I cannot fulfil my duties,” he said. The truth: he’d failed.

“Whyever not?” Emma asked.

“I’m going blind,” he said, ending where he should have begun. Waiting to see her face change as she took it in, the horror, the rejection.

“It was never your idea to tell me,” she said, surprising him. 

“Emma—”

“It must have been Mrs. Foster. She’s the only one you’d listen to, who’d think to tell you,” Emma said. He nodded at her, unsure of what she would say next; he’d imagined her arguing with the diagnosis, with his departure. 

“Can you see me clearly as we are?” she asked softly.

“No, not clearly,” he admitted and then she was beside him, kneeling so her face was upturned like a little flower, close enough to touch her if he reached just so.

“Take me with you, Henry,” she said. And smiled. If he were not sitting, he would have stumbled, entirely astonished.

“What—”

“Perhaps you think I shouldn’t speak this way, but you’ll never ask, will you? You’ll disappear, from this hospital, from everyone who cares about you, you’ll decide that’s best and it’s not. Not for you, Henry Hopkins, nor for anyone who cares for you. Who loves you,” Emma said. 

“How can I ask you to leave everything behind, your family, your friends and your vocation?” he said.

“You’re not going home to a hovel,” Emma replied smartly. “You’ve a family and a vocation of your own and for Heaven’s sake, you know the Bible by heart already. Though I’d go with you if you had none of it.”

“Emma, you don’t know—”

“I know, Henry. I know I love you. I know that if there’s nothing to be done, we’ll grieve what you lose, but you’re saving me no heartache by doing it alone,” she said. “Is there truly nothing to be done?”

“Jed mentioned an operation, in Boston or Europe, but it will be costly, and I cannot justify it,” Henry said. “I have a modest salary, but I haven’t saved much, not when the need here has been so great, the boys going hungry and the contraband…”

“There is no way on God’s green earth the Fosters haven’t offered to help. Dr. Foster cannot need one more brocade vest. That your family would not find a way,” Emma said, tossing her head like the belle she’d once been.

“They did. And they would,” Henry admitted. Mary Foster had taken the gold brooch from her lace collar and set it before him like a gauntlet, saying _This is mine alone, mine to give_ so Henry wouldn’t worry Jed would fuss. When taken her hand at her front door, she had leaned forward and grazed his cheek with her lips, murmuring _It wouldn’t be a waste, to save your sight, to simply try_. He’d managed to not cry until he was alone in his room.

“I only see one problem,” Emma said, laying her hand on his, making him forget everything else. He supposed he was meant to argue with her, to tell her she was throwing away her life, she owed a duty to the patients, but he was a selfish man really and he was tired; he knew she could counter his every point. All he wanted was Emma in his arms and she was so very close, so very lovely. 

“Only one?”

“Only one that’s important,” she said, smiling most winsomely. He’d remember it no matter what happened. He’d know he’d been blessed. “Who’s to conduct the wedding if you are the bridegroom?”

**Author's Note:**

> The idea behind this story crossed my mind a day or so after the following: Henry appears with glasses in the murder mystery and it's not clear how good his vision is, there is a discussion in comments or Tumblr (can't recall) about why Henry would leave Mansion House without Emma, and several people talk about favorite characters for whump. It's not really in keeping with the Murder Mystery, but could have occurred in the Season 3 we never got...
> 
> Title is from William Golding.


End file.
